EVEN the best farmers go broke if they are not 100 per cent focused on what consumers want.

This is the warning from long-standing branded meat producer and retailer Richard Gunner, who says he has seen first-hand examples.

Mr Gunner runs the Coorong Angus Beef and Pure Suffolk lamb branded meat businesses, as part of a paddock-to-plate enterprise in South Australia.

The Gunners own 6500ha of grazing land, lease a further 3000ha and run 1400 Angus cattle and 5000 Suffolk ewes. The family also has a 6000-head cattle feedlot, five retail outlets and a wholesale division.

A self-confessed control freak, Mr Gunner said he learnt early on other people don't always do the right thing by you, and sometimes you have to do it yourself.

For him, this meant working in the family's first butcher shop to learn how the retail market worked.

"Everyone said to me you'll work out that to be competitive you'll lower your prices, but over time we worked out that if you can deliver what consumers want, consistently, they will pay more," Mr Gunner said.

"We are proudly inefficient, and will add costs, but we know exactly why we do that."

Mr Gunner said he had been involved with several leading producers who did not know what their consumers needed, and although they were efficient their businesses failed, because their product was not in demand.

"One pork producer was turning off 23,000 pigs annually, and had won many production awards, but they admitted that they didn't eat their own pork and had no idea how their product ate," he said.

"Six months after I left they went broke."

Another example was a lamb producers group in South Australia's South East who were producing a branded product year-round.

"They were able to produce a fantastic product nine months of the year, but a terrible product for the remaining three months," Mr Gunner said.

"This business failed because they didn't listen to their consumers, despite the fantastic product they could produce in some of the best production systems."

Mr Gunner said he strongly supports the Meat Standards Australia grading system.

He said those in the business who ignored the results of MSA's 500,000 consumer taste-tests were missing out.

"It's a great resource for farmers. Under MSA they can get kill-sheet feedback, and if you're consumer focused, this is what it's all about," he said.

"MSA is a fantastic resource farmers need to use more to understand their consumers."